People & Places

BEST BOOK BY A LOCAL AUTHOR Miami 2004 - Loving Che by Ana Menéndez

In Miami you don't ponder the now-mythical life of Che Guevara so much as argue about it. The legendary Argentine guerrilla's name is cursed, cried over, or simply shuddered at for the loss it represents to so many Cuban exiles. In fact Menéndez's own father, who fled the island in 1960, was as wary as anyone else while paging through Loving Che, asking sourly, "Why did you have to print so many pictures of that son of a bitch?" As Menéndez's title suggests, her novel is an attempt to grapple with those emotions, with that revolutionary moment's enduring appeal to new generations. Forget dry historical accounts: Menéndez conjures up a sweaty love affair involving the protagonist against the backdrop of Havana's 1959 convulsions. Menéndez crafts passages that cement her as one of our city's finest voices of the Cuban experience, one whose ability to create lyricism out of pain is rare.